Two Nations One Pantun

When we talk about global culture, we should tear down all primordial barriers. According to the United Nations, the world’s population has reached 8 billion, and in the 21st century there is almost no culture in a place that does not intertwine with other cultures. When we discuss Malay culture, for example, we will look at groups of people who inhabit the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra, southern Thailand, the southern coast of Burma, and coastal Borneo including Brunei, West Kalimantan, Sarawak and Sabah.

The ancient Malays have migrated and spread to the archipelago since 2,500 BC and the Malay identity has transformed into Indonesian Malay, Malaysian Malay, and others, as stated by lecturer and researcher of Malay dance, Julianti Parani, in Indonesian Performing Arts: A Political Culture (2011). There is a cultural origin that once unified and then developed into the identity of each country. In the past, Malay had migrated and assimilated across the archipelago and Southeast Asia and as far as to Taiwan, Zanzibar and Australia.

When we discuss pantun, more specifically Malay pantun, it is not possible to associate this cultural heritage to Indonesia only. In fact, the Malayness in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei can be said to be more apparent since Malays are understood as a race with wide ethnicity variables (Islamic religion, customs and language), in contrast to Malays in Indonesia which only refers to one ethnicity. Therefore, the joint nomination by Indonesia and Malaysia for inscription of pantun onto the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) made sense.

Proposing pantun to UNESCO for its inscription on the Representative List of the ICH of Humanity on 17 December 2020 at the ICH Intergovernmental Committee sessions in France and Jamaica was quite long. Looking back, the Association of Oral Traditions (ATL) together with the Malay Traditional Institute (LAM) submitted pantun to the Ministry of Education and Culture through the Directorate General of Culture in 2016, and on 7-29 September 2016 a preliminary meeting was held to propose pantun as ICH to UNESCO. After the presentation of the academic text on 3 November 2016, feedback was received, among which there was no explanation to anticipate possible claims by Malaysia which also uses the Malay language. In response to this feedback, proposing pantun as a multinational nomination with other Malay countries was considered more appropriate. However, since Singapore,

Brunei Darussalam and Thailand were apparently not ready, the joint nomination for pantun was proposed only by Indonesia and Malaysia.

The decision to jointly nominate pantun was met with some rejection, because Indonesia felt it had more rights. However, the facts show pantun is still used by the Malay, the Bajau, the Ida’an, the Kedayan, and the Baba Nyonya communities in Malaysia. As for Indonesia, pantun is not only known in Riau Province and the Riau Islands, but has spread to Lampung through the kias tradition, also in Minangkabau society, on to Betawi through palang pintu and rancak performances and to South Kalimantan, Manado and Ambon.

In its development, the joint nomination for ICH has become a more convenient and reasonable choice, for its technical and ideological reasons. According to the Chairperson of ATL, Pudentia MPSS,

UNESCO also encourages multinational nomination by two or more countries that have intertwined cultural histories. Besides pantun, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand recently nominated kebaya to UNESCO ICH lists.

The Allusions in Pantun

Pantun as we know today is an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation in Malay society. British linguist and orientalist, William Marsden, in his book The History of Sumatra (1783), states that the characteristic of Malay pantun is highly allusive, and the allusions are in fact the spirit of this oral tradition. Meanwhile, linguist Charles Adrian van Opuijsen said that pantun has the same position as the early poetry genre, because pantun was also present in the early life of the Indonesian people. According to Malay language expert, Richard James Wilkinson, pantun uses hidden words, which rhyme, or pattern of the sounds is suggestive to the listener.

Pantun was presented in religioussacred events in the past. Pantun was then developed and used in communal spaces such as in rituals and traditional ceremonies, which, together with gurindam and petatah-petitih, were able to enliven traditional events and became the stage for mastery of the figurative language of the Malay people until now. Furthermore, pantun also entered the popular area, in the form of aesthetic expressions such as song lyrics, and expression of feelings in everyday interactions between individuals.

In the academic text of pantun, which was submitted to UNESCO, some examples on the use of pantun in daily life of the Riau community were included. For example, the traditional ceremony of babalian (from Rantau Kuantan), bulian (from Talang Mamak), belian (from Petalangan), bedewo or mambang dewo-dewo (from Bonai), tu-un jin or buang lancang (from Penipahan), buang talam (from Bengkalis), bedikei (from Sakai), dan upah-upah (from Rokan).

Pantun in communal events is used in economic activities such as menggetah kuaran (in the Kuantan and Kampar areas), batobo (in Kampar, Rantau Kuantan, and Tiga Lorong), menumbai, mengayun enau, timang padi, and catching fish. Pantun is also used in life cycle ceremonies and performing arts. We are familiar with zapin (from coastal and inland areas), gambus batandang (from Talang Mamak), kayat, randai (from Rantau Kuantan), koba (from Rokan), timang onduo (from Rokan/Bonai), nandung (from Indragiri), badondong and basiacuong (from Kampar), gaden (from Bengkalis), olang-olang (from Sakai), and many others.

Researcher of pantun, Rendra Setyadiharja quoting a pantun by Haji Ibrahim in his book Old Malay Pantuns (1877) which contains metaphors or symbolic meanings (Media Indonesia, 20/22/2022):

Buah berembang hanyut ke lubuk

Anak undan meniti batang

Kalbu abang terlalu mabuk

Menentang bulan di pagar Bintang

Berembang fruit drifting to the bottom

Undan bird walks through the trunk

Love bug struck my heart

Against the moon challenged by stars

The word moon represents a time or atmosphere and has meanings related to destiny and the future and can also symbolize a romantic atmosphere between two people. This pantun may tell about a young man who has romantic feelings but cannot show his feelings, marked by a love bug that struck my heart.

We can see that sampiran (foreshadowing verses) in pantun may not just be a decorative word to sweeten the rhymes, but also plays a role in conveying the meaning of the rhyme. Sampiran may be used to describe local wisdom, and from the sampiran alone we can find out how events, history, culture, traditions or customs took place. In essence, pantun upholds various lifeways of the Malay people.

This is the reason why when we hear the type of “pantun for fruits” (pantun with the names of the fruits), it feels like the meaning of the pantun becomes distorted, for as long as it rhymes. For example, “Mango, pomegranate, if my sister is miserable, even my brother will suffer,” or “Pineapple, guava, my heart is boiled seeing her being seduced.” If you look at the positive side, “pantun with fruit names” can be a way of learning, yet it’s not easy to produce words with attractive diction.

When you think about it, it is not easy to create pantun, let alone do it spontaneously. It is hard. Therefore, a continuous learning process is needed, one of which is by safeguarding traditional ceremonies, life cycle celebrations, and other performing arts by practicing pantun. The inscription of pantun on UNESCO ICH list, jointly nominated by Indonesia and Malaysia, should be able to make the safeguarding of pantun easier, because it shall be done by “two parties”. One pantun belongs to two countries.

(Susi Ivvaty, Indonesiana).